Shot in the Dark

Best Effort

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The Chief of Police speaks, giving  a completely different take on Uvalde.

So maybe our new School Security Plan – in addition to keeping outside doors locked and having an armed resource officer on the scene – includes changing the locks?  There ought to be one master key to open every door and the cops ought to have access to it (how about storing it in a lock-box on scene, like the fire department does).

I have trouble understanding why it was possible to bust windows in neighboring classrooms to evacuate those children, but not to bust the window in this classroom to shoot the gunman.

I have trouble understanding why firemen couldn’t use the jaws of life to open the classroom door.

I have trouble understanding why everybody stood around outside waiting for an hour as the Chief waited in the classroom corridor until the Border Patrol eventually stormed the shooter.

I have trouble understanding why it took the Chief so many days to tell his side of the story.

Unless . . .

. . . he lawyered up and this is the best story they could concoct. 

Yes, I am that cynical.

Joe Doakes

By this point, if you’re not cynical, you’re not paying attention.

Oh, yeah – what if the door wasn’t locked at all?

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14 responses to “Best Effort”

  1. jdm Avatar
    jdm

    I know that JD writes his post emails a few days ago. This is from last evening. It’s all (apparently) far worse. Multiple officers were inside Robb Elementary School with rifles.

  2. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    You know, while I agree with the sentiment “if you’re not willing to risk your life to protect innocents, please find another career besides police work”, I also understand that even the best and bravest lock up when push comes to shove. That’s why it’s important to help harden zones where mass killers might be tempted to visit, say by “arming teachers”, encouraging pepper spray among those who don’t want to be armed, and the like.

    But that said, yes, if it turns out to be half as bad as it appears, we have a failure in leadership that ought to result in the chief of police and probably a few others finding new things to do with their time. And I agree that the claims that arise after this long are at least suspect.

  3. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    Oh yeah… there were pigs (not all cops are pigs but these ARE pigs!) inside the school almost all the time. And they had a ballistic shield. Looking worser and worser for the pigs… but RED FLAG LAWS NOW!

    bike for the umpteenth time, cops are NOT required to protect or risk ANY lives. Other than innocent children and bystanders of course – without impunity and under qualified immunity.

  4. Night Writer Avatar
    Night Writer

    Yesterday I watched the documentary (on YouTube – search “Texas University Clock-tower Sniper 1966) of the minute-by-minute documentary of the 1966 University of Texas clock tower shooting. It’s well done and very compelling. It’s interesting to see how much things have changed since then, even if the outcomes haven’t. Then, the police were lightly armed with .38 revolvers and most didn’t even have shotguns in their cars. Communication capabilities were spotty, and there wasn’t any training in special response or tactics (one of the reasons that this incident contributed to SWAT units being formed).

    Three cops and a civilian, without any onsite tactical command or organization, made their way independently into the building where they met up with the others and formed a plan. They had one shotgun, one hunting rifle, and their service revolvers. They executed a flanking strategy around the observation deck, which was successful in part due to the civilian accidentally firing the rifle, which drew the sniper’s attention – allowing the two cops on the other pincer to kill him with the shotgun and a revolver.

    Their attack was complicated by the steady gunfire from the ground, provided by citizens who had grabbed their own hunting rifles during the 90 minute siege. Before going onto the deck, the civilian had this exchange with the officer with him:
    “Are we playing for keeps?” (shooting to kill).
    “Oh, yeah – we’re playing for keeps.”
    “Then you better deputize me.”
    “Consider yourself deputized.”

    The sniper killed 14 that day from the tower, and wounded about 30. One of the wounded had his kidneys destroyed and was on dialysis for a couple of decades before he terminated care and died. The shooter also killed his mother and his wife the night before his attack. In the detailed letter he left for the authorities he said he killed them to spare them the ordeal of the trauma and attention they’d receive after the event.

    If you go to YouTube to watch it, you should also take another hour and view Paul Harrell’s logical and thoughtful and 98% politics-free review of the history (including the tower) and causes of mass shootings, and the steps needed to effectively address these.

  5. jdm Avatar
    jdm

    we have a failure in leadership that ought to result in…

    Ought doesn’t seem to have any power anymore. Especially among leaders.

  6. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    Turns out even with all these well-trained good guys with a gun, nothing could be done to defend against an 18 year old boy with a semi-automatic rifle he legally bought on his birthday. And the response is what? Armed teachers? Or is it better doors? Or let’s turn the schools into locked down fortresses?

    And before anyone talks about “they need better training”, people need to understand that the police did an active shooter drill about 2 months earlier in the local high school. The training protocol is very clear — active shooters must be engaged and stopped immediately. Chief Arredondo ignored that training.

  7. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    Thin blue line…

    ‘Texas DPS director: Law enforcement response to Uvalde shooting was ‘an abject failure’
    https://www.statesman.com/story/news/2022/06/21/texas-dps-chief-response-uvalde-shooting-an-abject-failure/7650483001/

  8. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    About a week after Uvalde, a potential school shooting in Alabama was defeated by locked doors and an armed officer who confronted the individual. Before you sneer at locked doors and armed officers, consider how many children are NOT dead today, because schools took common sense measures to protect their students.

    About a week after that, a woman legally carrying a pistol stopped a mass shooting at a graduation party in Virginia. The ‘good guy with a gun’ theme does work, when we let it.

    Liberals insist nobody ever needs to be armed: we should rely on the ‘experts’ because they’re trained professionals, true heros who run toward the sound of gunfire and not time-serving union hacks pushing around terrified parents as their children plead for 911 to stop the massacre. Time to stop listening to Liberals.

  9. kinlaw Avatar
    kinlaw

    I’m in a good mood, I’ll throw the troll a bone. There were NOT “good people with guns” there. There were people there, there were guns there, even people with guns there, but no good guy with a gun.

    Until the border patrol showed up.

    More weak sauce from the squeaker.

  10. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    “Good guy with a gun” are rare occurrences.

    If guns kept people safe, then the US would be the safest nation on the planet, by far. Instead, the US has the highest homicide rate in the first world, by far.

    (And before some nitwit (kinlaw) posts a list of nations that includes El Salvador and Honduras, may I remind you that neither of them is an industrialized nation.)

  11. bosshoss429 Avatar
    bosshoss429

    I am still wondering where the SRO go and why was he off campus? I’m also still thinking that there is something fishy with both Uvalde and Parkland. The entire Uvalde tragedy was a virtual carbon copy of Parkland. There are no coincidences.

  12. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    I’m old enough to remember Governor Abbott claiming the PD did a great job —“it could’ve been worse”

  13. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    boss, perp with a clearly visible AR walked in through a back door that was propped open, past two armed pigs (not all cops are pigs but these ARE) who took no action.

  14. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    Scroll down to the charts of gun ownership, gun deaths, and WHO IS COMMITTING THEM.

    https://www.powerlineblog.com/page/2?layout=blog

    I’m safer that all those European nations you admire, E. It’s Black people who are driving up the numbers. Obviously, the solution is to take guns away from Blacks again, right? So why not just come right out and say it? Why the passive-aggressive tactics?

    You’re like the Karen in the office who posts snippy little notes saying “Everyone PLEASE clean your coffee cups” when we all know Janice is the offender; or HR sending emails saying “Employees must use leave in whole-day increments only” because Janice always takes an hour of vacation on Friday afternoons to scoot out early, dumping the customer load on the rest of us. Stop being Karen.

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